Day 7

Baseball game. We drove to downtown San Diego and watched the Padres play the Diamondbacks. Unfortunately, I didn't know which team to root for.

Usually, during games, the team has people throw items into the crowd, items like baseballs, shirts, etc. Well, there was one special lady who decided that she was going to throw stuff into the crowd too. She was sitting about 10 rows in front of us, and stands up and starts throwing things. First she threw some chips, then a capri sun. Next came a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. She was not throwing prizes into the crowd, she was throwing her lunch. Somehow she ended up with a whole bag of sandwiches, and we were able to snag a few.

Day 8

Barbeque on the beach. Matt and his brothers played frisbee for a while, then we served up some Nathan's Hotdogs. Unlike Kobiayshi or Joey Chestnut, we were only able to eat a few, and we didn't dunk ours in lemonade.

Day 9

One more visit to Disneyland. Beat Matt again on Toy Story Mania. 140,000 to 150,000.

Day 10

Drive 9 hours back to Provo.

Wisdom Teeth

For the past few months Stacy has been complaining how her teeth have been hurting and that she thinks that her wisdom teeth are coming through. Well, a couple of weeks ago the teeth broke the through the gums and Stacy has been able to chew through leafy green foods like a cow eats grass. Her extra set of chompers have come in handy, but they say that you are supposed to get them out at some point in your youth. I don’t really know who ‘they’ are, but ‘they’ are making a lot of money. I don’t think that Charles Darwin would be happy to find out that we are taking everyone’s wisdom teeth out. Nature has selected us to have wisdom teeth and we should probably keep them. It is our sense of human nature that has sustained us as a people for the past 5 thousand years (7 thousand years – even better).

Anyway, they took them out and they must have not been that bad, because the oral surgeon was in there for about 10 minutes yanking them out (so lets see, 1400 dollars for maybe a total of 20 minutes of work, that equals 4200 bucks an hour, I would like to see a lawyer bill that much an hour). She was loopy for the first day and pretty out of it. After sleeping until 10 o’clock the next morning she woke up to a swollen left cheek, she came to call herself, Quasimodo, aka the hunch back of Notre Dame (because of the lopsidedness of his face). I will let you be the judge. But she is doing much better, the pain is subsiding, and the swelling is going down. She can’t wait to start eating normal foods again; her diet has consisted of instant potatoes, pudding, jello, and ice cream. Before the surgery she was pretty excited to be on this diet for a whole week, but at this point I don’t think that she could eat another spoonful of Idahoan instant spuds.

Que hora es?

For those of you who know a little more Spanish than "hay muchos tacos en Mexico,""Una cerveza para mi," and "Feliz Navidad," you may actually understand what actually transpired in an interview between me and Gloria Carmona in the highly viewed Enlace Seminal. Now whether or not I made any sense in a topic of my expertise of la obesidad infantil is a whole other story (of which according to an earlier post by brad that stated that I occasionally poked fun of the husky pants that he wore as a youth). Some of you might recognize my shirt from my I.D. card from my junior year of high school, it was purchased between my sophomore and junior year and I think that it was my first Nautica shirt; I have not thrown it away because it still fits me. It is my golden boy.

For some background of how I ended up on this show, I was at work one day and my boss inquired whether or not I would help with a small interview in Spanish. I said yes and didn’t think much of it. Well, a few weeks, I found out that I would being go up to Salt Lake City to do the interview during the day, which of course I was on the clock for. The interview was supposed to be about childhood obesity. I asked the lady from the hospital that was in charge of putting this all together whether or not there were questions that I could review before going up there. I was told that they did not have any. Well, when I showed up to their little studio I received the list of questions that were supposedly sent to the lady at the hospital. So I quickly whipped up a few answers and translated them into Spanish in my head. It was kind of an awkward interview because I had to look into a camera lens, there were hot, bright lights all around me, and Gloria was in L.A. speaking to me on the phone. Needless to say it’s hard enough to understand the Hispanics in person, let alone on a poorly connected land line. Well, I have a few different videos that should include most everything that I said. The last question was really bad, I forgot what I was going to say and I look like a fool. But it is funny.

Nine on Nine, also known as Matt on Nine

This spring, because of a few miscommunications, Matt and his friends didn't get a 9 on 9 team for flag football. So...Matt decided to join our ward's 9 on 9 team. Turns out, Matt is the team. These poor boys don't know what hit them. A few of them know how to play, but some are a bit more interesting than others. Yesterday was the first game I went to, so I was able to take some visual evidence of what was going on.

Here's the pick of the game...watch Matt in the red shirt and silver shorts.

Here's Matt and some of the other players.

Matt has been playing basketball with his friends, though.

Monte Cristo, Student Projects, and What the Heck is That?

My students have recently finished reading The Count of Monte Cristo. It is an excellent book that happens to be a kajilion times better than the movie. I had my students do a variety of projects on the book, and I wanted to share them with you.

Some of the kids payed extra attention to landscape detail...

Some took hours making quilts with quotes from each character in a block...



And then some handed me these. Upon recieving such a project, I asked myslef, "What the heck is this." The student tells me that it's the scene where Caderousse kills his wife and the jewler. "Hmm." I say. I didn't know Caderousse was a little Army man. Can you say F?

Still not quite sure what this one is.